Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to the prior art by inclusion in this section.
Known wearable dietary activity monitoring systems have drawn increasing amounts of attention as the systems can track an individual daily intake, the food quantities, related calories, and nutrient data when diet tracking is active. The wearable dietary activity monitoring systems include: (a) image/camera based, (b) wrist-worn, (c) neck-worn, and (d) ear-bud based systems.
Image/camera based systems analyze photos of the food being consumed by the individual and aim to detect the number of calories consumed automatically. However, image/camera based systems are unable to confirm if the individual fully or partially consumed the food without manual feedback.
In another example, wristband based systems focus on the gesture and hand movement of the individual to detect eating/drinking activities. Again, such systems are unable to confirm if the individual fully or partially consumed the food, and are therefore highly inaccurate without manual feedback, e.g. self-reporting food consumption. On the other hand, throat-worn and ear-bud based systems are based on jaw muscle movement and sound activities detection. However, conventional systems cannot accurately monitor the amount of food ingested nor the calories consumed.
In general, head-worn based systems comprise either a stethoscope or a vibration sensor mounted within a housing. The stethoscope is capable of capturing breathing sounds, but is incapable in detecting high frequency characteristics of ingestion sounds. As such, the accuracy of stethoscope-based systems is low. Conventional vibration sensor-based systems have low sensitivity and may generate signals when the user moves. As such, the recorded vibrations are inaccurate and cannot be used to accurately classify ingestion activities.
Therefore, a wearable dietary activity monitoring system capable of accurately classifying chewing and swallowing sounds and monitoring food intake and calories would be beneficial.